Even Better Than The Real Thing
by kinneas
Summary: M!Hawke/Anders. "Sometimes you get exactly what you wish for." Minor spoilers for a MotA banter - you know the one.


**Even Better Than The Real Thing**

Home is some sort of relief, like sitting down after a long, overly-sweaty day back on the farm, or smuggling Athenril's 'herb' shipments, when the blood rushes from his legs and the ache in his feet turns from painful to _satisfying_.

Anders is out of his pauldrons and coat and stumbling upstairs before Garrett can even dump his luggage into Bodahn's stumpy arms. They hadn't been out of Kirkwall since that whole business with Father and a sheaf of angry dwarves, and while this certainly hadn't gone _as bad_, Garrett's willing to bet good coin Anders joins him in drinking and fucking themselves stupid.

His stomach rumbles, his beard itches, and his feet ache.

After midday meal, and after Anders' incessant and perhaps slightly hypocritical insistence that, '_Not until you take another bath, I know where those hands have been_,' when they're clean and worn and alone, Garrett finally smiles, with teeth.

"So," he says, straddling where Anders is on the bed, pushing him flat, his fresh hair splayed across the sheets. "Tell me more about this _fantasy_ of yours."

Anders chuckles.

The safe house is smoldering, the door smashed in, hinges still creaking. Fresh carnage.

Garrett stumbles through charred wood, into the darkness of the house, and the stench of blood hits him like a punch to the face. The meeting with the Cumberland libertarians had only kept him a blighted hour, but all that's alive in the house are tortured groans.

Garrett's fingers fumble as he lights a lantern.

Someone gasps. Tess is slumped bloody in her seat in front of the map. Bancroft is either dead or dying on the floor.

" - _ampion_."

By the door, huddled in a corner, Coop, a Fereldan, rasps for his attention. Garrett's at his side in a heartbeat, and he doesn't even bother asking the obvious question.

"Templars," Coop struggles, swallowing down the hole in his side, "...found out we're here. Thought I was dead, left me to it."

_Deep shit_ doesn't come close to describing the sinking feeling in Garrett's gut, but it's not until he sees Anders' sword on the ground, bloody but not bloody _enough_, that the careful facade of calm he's constructed rots away.

"_Where is he?_"

"One of the rogue groups." Coop shakes his head, blood dripping from his hair to the floor. "They're..." he coughs, "They're puttin' the brand to him."

Garrett's blood runs cold, but his head's as hot as the flames of Andraste. "_Where?_" he snaps, and his voice is a guttural growl.

* * *

><p>"It's been <em>days<em>," Anders says, and he slides his palms over Garrett's thighs. "You'd really rather listen to my silly fantasy than something more _fun_?"

Anders' cheeks have that rosy tint to them that's always welcome but entirely unsuited for a man his age, and Garrett pushes his shirt up to his arms, his own broad hands on Anders' pale skin, and leans low. "Who says we can't do both? I want every naughty detail."

"_Well_," Anders sighs, playing impressively at _affected_, "then I think you should show me how much you really want to know." And Garrett's nothing if not up for a challenge - not that kissing Anders, exacting those breathy little noises from his throat, brushing the deepest reaches of his mouth as he opens beneath Garrett has ever been particularly _challenging_.

Anders winds his arms across Garrett's back and into his hair, letting Garrett sink into him for the briefest of moments before pushing him away. "I can't very well tell you if you're kissing me senseless," he says, breathless, eyes crinkling, and it's a fair enough point, Garrett supposes, so he just kisses down his neck instead.

"Mm," Anders says, an affirmation good enough for Garrett, and he backs it up by massaging his fingers through Garrett's hair with a comfortable sigh . "Well, _there I am_, chained in the Gallows, completely helpless - "

"Completely?" Garrett slides his hands up the soft skin of Anders' arms, to his wrists, gently pinning him. "_Well_, you can stop right there."

"That's not the good part!" Anders says, kneeing at him, but lacing their fingers all the same. "You can't just leave me to the templars."

Garrett laughs, and sucks at the hollow just above his collarbone, breathing in the simple soaps Anders absolutely insists on, presumably for the greater good of the oppressed soap collective. "Perish the thought," he says. "I can't let them have all the fun, anyway."

"The fun part starts when you actually save me," Anders says dryly, but Garrett doesn't miss how he pushes up into him, rolls his hips, tilts his head back into the pillow. It's an enticing invitation, all that vulnerability and skin, but there's things to be done and fantasies to be heard.

"So," Garrett says instead, "do I ride in on a large white horse, _glistening_ to my love's harrowing rescue?"

Anders rolls his eyes and settles back down. "I admit, I hadn't given much thought beyond my own perilous circumstances."

"How selfish of you," Garrett says, crossing his arms over Anders' chest, resting his head and peering up at him. "Haven't you ever had a proper rescue fantasy before? The entrance is so _important_."

Anders just gazes back, that patient, loving look with just the right undertones of _sly_ on his face, and he closes the couple of inches into a long kiss.

"Scratch that," Garrett says into his mouth, "I think I'd be more dashing with a cape."

"Hmm," Anders taps his chin. "I like capes, but I'm not sure they're _you_."

* * *

><p>When Garrett bursts through the door of the abandoned Chantry building, cutting through the hoarse cries on the other side, all he sees is Anders' tear-stained, panicked, <em>angry<em> face, and the glowing brand the templar holds to his forehead.

Garrett's dagger flies through the room a split second before Garrett does, slashing the templar standing over Anders through the throat. The templar nearest the door catches Garrett's other dagger in the belly, and with him fall the magic wards.

Anders screams in two voices.

The recruits holding his arms hurl in opposite directions, smashing against the stone walls with sheer arcane force, their bones crunching in heavy armor. Anders descends on one of them, crackling with lightning and Fade as Garrett rips his knife from one dead templar and slices through another soon-to-be dead templar.

They should spare one of them, just for questioning, ask him how by _Andraste's bloody arsehole_ his strung-out lackeys managed to find them, but the burn's still raw on Anders' skin, his eyes red-rimmed from tears and his mouth dripping with mostly his own blood.

It's with no small pleasure that Garrett gashes the throat of the last of them. Justice is hard.

The blue cast fades, and behind him Anders slumps to his knees. Garrett rushes over and gathers him in his arms; he's shaking, but Garrett's not sure if it's in rage or shock or fear. Maybe all of it.

Anders pulls away, fingers glowing as he heals himself. He grimaces and spits a wad of blood on the floor. "Bit my tongue," he says, teeth stained red. "Didn't work."

"It was too close." Anders' voice is shaky, and Garrett can hear the rage bubbling deep under the agony. His breath catches in his throat, and he pulls Anders close again, presses his lips to Anders' forehead where that terrible burn is healing, and now _both_ of them are trembling.

"_They will never take another mage_," Garrett growls, because that's the point they've reached, and also because it's pretty ironic, but mostly because while he can't do magic, he can still start fires.

* * *

><p>"Alright, so, I smash through the Gallows - no cape, on a <em>black<em> horse, because that's more my style."

"Right in the nick of time," Anders finishes, and he's getting impatient, but the good kind of impatient, because he guides Garrett's head lower, over his chest, his fingers threaded in Garrett's hair. "The templars are still standing over me, after all, brand in hand."

"Oh, is this a murder fantasy, too? Red is _so_ my color." Garrett rolls his teeth over a nipple, reveling in the fine hair brushing his cheek and the pleased little _nnh_ sound Anders makes.

"You do kill a lot of them," he admits, but with nowhere near the physical difficulty he _should_, what with a warm man on top of him lavishing all this affection and tongue, so Garrett sits back, until he can _feel_ Anders beneath him, and rolls their hips together.

"_Garrett_," Anders groans.

"Then what?"

"Mm," he says, a smile in his eyes, playing at the laces of Garrett's trousers, at the coarse hair just beneath them. "Wouldn't you rather help me with that one?"

Anders is clutching at him so tight he's drawing blood.

"Everything we've worked for was nearly lost," he says, because he's Anders, and he's so much more than just Anders. But then he shudders, and makes a noise that might in Garrett's nightmares be a sob, and whispers, "_I_ was nearly lost."

Garrett grips either side of Anders' face and smushes their foreheads together, blood to burn, staring into his eyes. There's no furious blue, no brilliant glow of the Fade, but it doesn't matter.

"I would have rather _died_," Anders snarls, and Garrett shoves them both against the wall.

He kisses Anders hard and hot - he tastes like blood - and Anders grinds against him, lifting a leg around Garrett's thighs. Garrett grips his ass, then hoists him up, Anders' legs around his waist, and carries him the few steps to the dusty Chantry altar.

His teeth scrape at Anders' lip, but it's not rough, and his hands are buried in Anders' hair and around his back, protective and strong.

They go at it fast, hands in trousers, the wood creaking under Anders' shifting weight, the room echoing with Garrett's desperate groans, and the templars' blood still cooling.

* * *

><p>"And then what?" Garrett asks after, still breathless, rolling off Anders and brushing sweat-slicked hair from his face. "I sweep you off your feet, carry you dramatically into the sunset?"<p>

Anders smiles, tired but happy. "No," he says, "We walk into that sunset hand-in-hand, fighting together for freedom."

* * *

><p><em>an: Bigtime thanks to __spicyshimmy__ to reading chunks of this over and telling me I wasn't being completely dumb, which I'm still not sold on, but I had the bad bits partly written before the DLC came out so why the hell not?_

_Title is a U2 song. Completed 10.27_


End file.
